Exhibition Game Loss

Team Canada played a tune up game this morning at 7:30 PDT (6:30pm in Moscow) against the team they will meet first in the Tournament that starts on Friday. The game started out well enough for the visitors as they were able to withstand some early chances by the Russian Red Stars. Nikita Pivtsakin of the Unified MHL Team opened the scoring at 10:11 but that would be it for the first period.

"In the first minute of the second period fans of the Russian team had reason to be nervous," was the quote from the game summary. "The Canadians are getting several dangerous (scoring) chances on Roman Smiryagin (the starting Red Stars goaltender)."

At 3:37 of the second period there was a dangerous hit on a Canadian player that led to a scrum and offsetting minors for the two teams and a ten minute misconduct to Brett Knowles. Evan Richardson took a two minute minor at 4:49 and; although Team Canada was able to kill off the power play, the Red Stars made it a 2-0 game with a goal at 6:50.

The Russian squad increased their lead to 4-0 with a power play goal and an even strength marker four minutes apart. David Killip put Canada on the scoreboard eleven seconds later after being setup by Austin Carroll. From the ensuing faceoff there were coincidental minors handed out leaving the teams to play four-on-four. The Red Stars capitalized to restore their four goal lead and would add another goal before the end of the second to take a 6-1 lead to the dressing room.

Team Canada was unable to score on an early third period power play and instead found themselves down 7-1 with an even strength goal scored at 4:04. At 5:32 Malcom McKinney scored Canada's second goal of the game unassisted. Both teams would get one more power play chance each but neither scored on the man advantage. The Russians scored two more times before the end of the game to post the 9-2 victory.

The two teams will meet again on Friday afternoon at 3:00pm, 4:00am in BC, in the first game of the IIHF Round Robin Tournament. The late game has the Russian National Team playing the team from Slovakia. On Saturday Team Canada will play the Russian National Team at 6:30pm (7:30am PDT) before wrapping up their portion of the tournament as the home team against the Slovakians at 1:00pm (2:00am PDT) on Sunday.

Prior to the game RJay Berra and Justin Fillion got to meet Evengi Nabokov